MANUFACTURING -- Porcelain – When Gabriel Slater and Samuel Hudnit mapped out Frenchtown north of Fifth Street in 1866, they reserved space between Eighth and Twelfth streets – about 15 acres – where they expected the railroad would someday be repairing trains.
That never happened, but in 1909 Herbert Sinclair of Trenton, president of the Star Porcelain Co. of Trenton, bought land on Lower Eighth Street and built a factory in 1910, including kilns, to make ceramics.
The 8 acres to the north were acquired by the company in 1919 for recreational purposes. And in 1920, to further boost morale, the workday was cut from 10 hours, down to nine.
The Frenchtown Porcelain Co. became the borough's largest employer. Its specialty was spark plugs, but it made hot- and cold-water faucet handles, too.
In August 1945 the employee magazine boasted, “Did you know that our products are used in tanks, trucks, flamethrowers, oilburners, autos, jeeps, aeroplanes, battleships, etc., on land, on the sea, and in the air?”
Not only did Frenchtown-made components win World War II, they went on to win the Indianapolis 500 as well!
Cars sponsored by Blue Crown Spark Plug won the Indy 500 in 1947, '48 and '49, with spark-plug insulators made right here.
Later the factory made body-armor plates, and those little dabs of porcelain for electronic circuit boards. Broken porcelain makes good clean fill, and the factory's rejects sometimes crop up when there's an excavation around town.
In 1936 the factory's four funnel-shaped kiln towers were dismantled; the factory would be using tunnel-type kilns.
In 1939 the employees formed a union, an affiliate of the American Federation of Labor.
In the 1960s, the company announced the expansion of its Electronic Components Division, making items that “range in size from giant cast parts for nuclear research to tiny insulators and metalized ceramic parts for transistors and other electronic devices for radio, TV, computers and communications” while “still making more spark plugs than ever.”
In 1965 the company was purchased by Alloys Unlimited, which in turn was purchased in 1971 by Plessey Ltd. In 1976 it was making components for computers, electronic watches, police and military communications, paging systems, welding torches, high-voltage switching gear, CB radios, cable television, and missiles (Trident, Polaris, Minuteman and Sparrow). In 1977 it had 200 employees. Plessey sold the plant to Frenchtown American Corp. in 1981. John Fredericks was the president of Plessey-Frenchtown and stayed in that job under the new ownership.
In 1983 Frenchtown American's parent company, American Oil & Supply International Inc., finished erecting a metal building at 809 Harrison Street, across from the school to provide laboratory space for three of its subsidiaries. Research would be done there on insecticides and lubricants. In 1984 that building was subdivided out of the porcelain company's grounds when the factory was sold to Pure Industries of St. Mary's, Pa.
The factory continued making ceramics into 1988.
Then the property was purchased by Clark E. Johnson, who leased parts of the factory it to small businesses, including fine-furniture makers like Ethan Perry and Nils Falk, a bronze foundry, potter John Fulwood, and a radon-detection company, but they gradually moved out and the buildings were left to deteriorate. Author Liz Gilbert and husband Jose Nunes' Two Buttons imports store was there briefly before moving to the south end of town.
The sprawling factory was demolished in 2018 by the VanCleef brothers to make way for their housing development.
The 1983 metal building was still in use at that time, owned by Michelle Flash and used by Cerbaco Ltd. Wondering what they do in there, I walked through the back door into the work room and chatted with the ladies. They were cutting up ceramic strips into squares that would be used by welders as backings for the seams they'd be welding.
In 2019 the VanCleefs purchased the metal building and continued ameliorating the industrial pollution where the porcelain factory had been. They managed to acquire the metal building and demolished it in 2020.
From "Rick's Frenchtown Encyclopedia"